============================== CFJ 3417 ==============================
Scshunt, the Promotor, for violating Rule 1607 (Distribution) for
violating Rule 2143 (Official Reports and Duties), and for
committing the Class-2 Crime of Tardiness, deserves to be awarded a
punishment no less severe than a Yellow Card.
========================================================================
Caller: Henri
========================================================================
Called by Henri: 19 Jun 2014 14:40:10
Assigned to omd: 30 Jun 2014 13:18:52
Judged TRUE by omd: 08 Jul 2014 10:59:33
========================================================================
Exhibit by Henri:
I submit a Judicial Case:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
S T A T E M E N T
-----------------
Scshunt, the Promotor, for violating Rule 1607 (Distribution)
for violating Rule 2143 (Official Reports and Duties), and for
committing the Class-2 Crime of Tardiness, deserves to be awarded
a punishment no less severe than a Yellow Card.
--------------------------------------------------
E V I D E N C E
---------------
Saturday, 06 Jun 02:26:49 :
Henri submits two proposals titled "The GNP Evaluation
System" and "The Minister for GNP Evaluation".
Sunday, 15 Jun 20:16:45 :
Promotor scshunt distributes all pending proposals
except for proposals "The GNP Evaluation System" and
"The Minister for GNP Evaluation".
Monday, 16 Jun 16:02:25 :
Henri gives friendly Claim of Error to Promotor's Weekly
Distribution.
Tuesday, 17 Jun 00:00;00 :
The Agoran week of Tues 10 June ends.
--------------------------------------------------
A R G U M E N T S
-----------------
Rule 1607 (Distribution) states the following:
In any given Agoran week, the Promotor SHALL, as part of
eir weekly duties, distribute all pending proposals.
The weekly duty of the Promotor is defined as a distribution of
"all pending proposals" Scshunt, the promotor, on Sunday, 15 Jun
20:16:45, failed to distribute all pending proposals and did not
do so in the period between 15 Jun 20:16:45 to 17 Jun 00:00:00,
thereby failing to perform his duty to Distribute as Promotor. By
failing to perform his duty as Promotor, he has also violated Rule
2143 (Official Reports and Duties) which states:
Any information defined by the rules as part of a
person's report, without specifying which one, is part of
eir weekly report. Failure of a person to perform any
duty required of em within the allotted time is the
Class-2 crime of Tardiness.
A person SHALL NOT publish information that is
Indeterminate, inaccurate or misleading while performing
a weekly or monthly duty, or within a document purporting
to be part of any person or office's weekly or monthly
report.
By failing to Distribute, scshunt is also guilty of committing the
Class-2 Crime of Tardiness as described above.
At this point, scshunt is guilty of the following:
a) The violation of Rule 1607 (Distribution)
b) The violation of 2143 (Official Reports and Duties)
c) The Class-2 Crime of Tardiness.
Futhermore, scshunt was given a friendly warning from Henri that
scshunt's Distribution was inaccurate, but the warning went
unheeded.
For the perpetration of these three violations of Law, scshunt
deserves a punishment no less severe than a Yellow Card.
--------------------------------------------------
Scshunt is barred from this Judicial Case.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
========================================================================
Exhibit by omd:
As stated in Rule 1023, Agoran weeks begin on Mondays, not Tuesdays.
The caller did indeed publish a message at the stated time (although
that's not the one e labeled as a CoE - not that it matters), but it
was well after the Promotor's deadline for distributing the proposal.
Accordingly, while scshunt indeed committed the mentioned violations,
they should be treated as a regular error, not an "aggravated" one
made in spite of warnings. The fact that e distributed the rest of
the proposals less than 4 hours before the deadline could count
against em, since there was no reasonable chance for a warning,
although tightly meeting deadlines is not usually considered a
problem*; in any case, eir failure to do so in the last 3 days or do
(despite incessant reminders) is not particularly significant.
That said, as the precedent of the recent Referee case reminds us, the
Referee's behavior is almost entirely discretionary, so it doesn't
matter what e deserves; this case should be DISMISSed as irrelevant.
* That is, a legal problem. I think delaying the proposal system this
way can and should be addressed through elections (no offense to
scshunt personally, I'm sure e's busy with Real Life), especially as e
holds both Promotor and Assessor, but I suppose the way to address
that would have been to nominate myself in one of the elections that
just ended. H. Henri, why not intend to deputise? :P
========================================================================
Exhibit by omd:
On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 7:16 PM, Kerim Aydin wrote:
> 3417 (Henri): "Scshunt, the Promotor, for violating Rule 1607
> (Distribution) for violating Rule 2143 (Official Reports and Duties),
> and for committing the Class-2 Crime of Tardiness, deserves to be
> awarded a punishment no less severe than a Yellow Card."
>
> is hereby assigned to omd.
All right. I've been away on vacation - I sincerely apologize for the
missing reports - but I guess ten minutes before a judgement deadline
is as good a time as any to get back. as it means this judgement will
describe an issue related to its own slight lateness :)
(Edit 24 hours later: more than slight. Ah, well...)
Preliminary: A case about whether Agoran weeks begin on Mondays or
Tuesdays is currently assigned to Murphy. However, because of the
time limit, and because this is in accordance with very long game
custom, I will assume that they begin on Mondays; if the judgement
goes the other way, I welcome Moots.
This matters because under this interpretation, as I stated in
gratuitous arguments, Henri did not warn H. Promotor scshunt until
after the deadline had passed. I postulate that after a player has
missed a deadline by means of an error, it is not appropriate to give
them a greater punishment for not acting extremely quickly to resolve
the matter. I don't remember any particular precedent on this, but it
follows from basic principles:
(1) We don't generally require players to react in a timeframe of less
than four days. This *is* long established and IIRC has been
judicially invoked in reference to consent periods, among other
things.
(2) All officers make mistakes. Therefore, (1) applies to correcting them.
In contrast, when a deadline violation is anticipatable, i.e. the
player doesn't even try to satisfy an obligation before the deadline,
it seems to make sense to be more forgiving if e gets around to it
slightly after it. However, I won't formally opine on it.
Also from arguments, another issue is whether it can be considered
reckless to publish a distribution at the last minute, since after
doing so, any errata, even those published quickly like Henri's, are
likely to be too late to correct in time. However:
(1) Errata that arrive within, say, 24 hours are common, but hardly
universal. I can hardly admonish scshunt for not distributing four
days before the deadline.
(2) Simple missed proposals, which can be corrected relatively
smoothly, are only one type of distribution error. Most other errors
require nullification of votes on an invalid distribution and usually
re-distribution, which are a hassle no matter how quickly the
correction comes. Thus, the practical impact of Promotor errors comes
more from making them in the first place than from timing.
(3) More generally, again, all officers make mistakes, and the rules,
written by players well aware of that, nevertheless set a deadline of
7 days. If a type of violation is inevitable occasionally, even for a
highly astute player, given a hypothetical long-term pattern of
behavior designed to comport with the rules, I'd like to say that
awarding extra punishment merely for that pattern is tantamount to
changing the rules - in this case, decreasing the deadline. This
doesn't mean that it necessarily merits zero punishment, of course -
most criminal systems we've had already account for the difference
between occasional and frequent violations. And it doesn't mean that
behavior intended to follow the rules is never reckless: while the
concept also applies to accidental timer violations, some players,
such as me, are sloppy enough that trying to barely satisfy timers
would result in a constant stream of violations, and accordingly can
be reckless. But it means that reckless should not be considered in
this case.
Mm, lots of text refuting an argument nobody but me actually made.
But then again, this entire judgement is in principle unnecessary: as
I gratuitously argued, along the same lines as the recent judgement
that the Referee's Cards are not a judicial system, it is reasonable
to consider what scshunt deserves (i.e. what a fair judicial system
ought to arrive at) irrelevant to the game. By submitting a
non-DISMISS judgement, I am not opining that it is relevant as such,
merely that it felt worth answering.
With the issues of slow correction and recklessness dismissed, the
only potential reason for additional punishment I am aware of is that
scshunt had *occasionally* made other Promotor-related slipups lately
(e.g. see recent Corrected Distributions), and had not been awarded
any Cards for it. Considering the imagery of a Red Card - and
remembering the PerlNomic Partnership's term as Promotor - I hardly
think e deserves one of those, so it's between Green and Yellow. On
the other hand, I think a Green Card is meaningless enough that it
doesn't really address a pattern of violations, even inconsequential
ones. Thus, though I have made multiple leaps of opinion, I am left
with Yellow.
(Please note that because a judgement should be "based on the facts of
the case at the statement at the time the CFJ was initiated" (sic),
the above does NOT take into account more recent violations such as
failure to distribute 'A More Appropriate Punishment' or publish a
report lately. Bleh...)
TRUE.
========================================================================